gardening

February 01, 2009

People are becoming irritated with me because if there is a pause in the conversation, I bring up the word tomatoes. I am rather obsessed with the prospect of growing tomatoes this summer and I have purchased over the internet 25 dollars worth of tomato seeds. I am not an overly green type. But suddenly I am worried about the future of our seeds, especially given the hardballs in the grocery.

Somewhere in Iceland or Greenland there is supposed to

be a seed vault. But I think we should be expanding our seed possibilities here at home. I have purchased cool season varieties. And as I said I would, I bought some Russian varieties. The Russians might know how to raise tomato seeds in cool weather. (By the way, Putin has announced that global warming is a piece of ----.)

So . . . I have purchased the seeds thinking I would ,as nearly everyone does, get a head start on seedlings. Maybe start them out on top of the water heater until they germinate. Then I was going to take them to my bathroom, which has a nice southern exposure and is the most cheerful room in the house, then lay a shelf over the bathtub and let them grow until time to go outside. I was going to make a lot of starts to give them away, let my grandkids have some. I was going to be generous. Victory Garden generous. I want to be a part of seed saving. Now I find out that you need grow lights. To have that many grow lights for the number of tomatoes I am thinking about, would eliminate entire rooms in my house.

I am hoping that someone will write in and tell me that I can just plant the seeds outside in the dirt, or I can plant seeds in pots in the bathroom. I want someone to go on the tomato adventure with me.

July 26, 2008

In my childhood during the great war were Victory Gardens. Now growing your own food, or buying locally is a called locavor. Locavors are so attached to everything green, that it makes more sense to grow it yourself, or as the New York Times reported, contract someone to come in, plan, plant, maintain, and harvest your garden for you.
This all amuses me no end. I am growing a vegetable garden because I have finally found out an easier way to do it: raised gardens or in my case containers. I do not even do organic. Well I do, if my worm bin is active. My life is living through chemistry already, and at my time of life what is a little miracle grow? I love the variations that you can grow. And I love the vegetables while they are still firm. I am even going to plant a plum tree in a pot.
Currently I am making some pickles. Also I made strawberry freezer jam. It has a ton of sugar, but the way I am looking at it is, a cup of strawberry jam has 119 % of your daily requirements for Vitamin C.

July 22, 2008

I was looking over a few old gardening posts. I see that when I had a broken ankle, I potted some tarragon twigs, and got my walking boot filthy. I planted those twigs after having given up gardening forever. My back yard is steep and difficult for me, and what had been my wee vegetable garden never produced much, although the zucchini kept me in the game. I was pleased that I would have tarragon, and putting it in a pot was easy.

Then I thought, well perhaps a tomato plant, and there is no sense having only one as I get so few tomatoes. I had some pots and then I filled those up because I could. I have a large metal anniversary pot where I put zucchini. Then I went down to my garden library and drug up every conceivable book from my past gardening phases. I have always wanted a French kitchen garden. Then I went to a bookstore and there was a book that I previously owned, and essentially threw away, on container vegetable gardening. By golly you can also do lettuce, and why not chard. There was the parsley to be replaced. Then I found a hidden book among my cookbooks that was called the French Potager. I wrote to a woman in France of kitchen gardening fame. She blew me off. Meanwhile I am buying dirt, bags and bags. Pots are very expensive if you buy good ones, and even if you buy trashy ones. I got heavy cardboard boxes from the produce department at the grocery. Many kitchen gardens have flowers, and already there were potted roses by the front of the house. I am praying my zinnias grow. One thing just leads to another.

How is this garden doing? Mixed. We have had a cool summer. My two person crops are just now beginning to be harvested. I doubt if my tomatoes will every form and ripen. But there is a thrill of picking something you have grown. And what is good, is very, very good. My chard picked small, rocks. I would never buy those huge wilted leaves in the grocery store. Lettuce is delicious. It has flavor. My success is enough to start my fall winter garden. Discovering, containers, fertilizer, and faithful watering has helped. There is little to no weeding.

Little did I know that I had stumbled onto something hot. I was told recently that people are gardening in horse troughs. This keeps the elderly from having to crawl on the ground and wondering if they can get up.

June 02, 2008

For more than 40 years I have off and on again made an attempt to grow vegetables. Not each and every year, but I have made a stab at it at least for 30 years. My gardens never succeeded, except for the sometimes zucchini, because of retched soil of one kind or another. Yes that is mainly it, unfriable soil. But deer, and other deer also chewed a lot up. Also there was lack of fertilizer, and sometimes lack of watering. I was the only one in the family who cared, but Mr. Radish has contributed a lot of money to the purchasing of deer fencing, dirt, manure and mulch, which he continues to do to this day.

Most of all what I really wanted was a small French Potager, once I learned what it was, which is vegetables and flowers all mixed together with a bistro chair sitting in the middle, preferably with a small table to hold the lemonade or iced tea. Perhaps a little shed, and a small touch of garden art, with a little pan of water for the birds. Sometimes I have thrown myself into this project, sometimes it has been rather casual, but mostly serious. My girls once bought me a fabulous blue glass gazing ball, which two years ago, I think, died in a child’s soccer practice.

In recent years health has deterred success. But the common denominator of all these efforts all these years was hope at the beginning when planning and planting, and the joy of picking and serving a few precious beans or zucchini at dinner at the end. And of course, tomatoes were the ultimate.

This year I discarded the idea of an all out effort. But I decided I would plant a big pot of zucchini, because four inch small, homegrown zucchini are the best. My patch is so small that it was not possible to rotate the beds right this year. Then one day my husband suggested we drive up for lunch with friends, to Joe’s Gardens in Bellingham. I was told by someone local not to think about any tomatoes, but Joe’ Special. Okay, so I got four tomatoes. Joe said to wait on the pumpkins. Pumpkins do look good cascading down the hill. Some friend of a friend had talked me into planting two roses in pots back in February, she said they were guaranteed. “All you need to do is feed them heavily.” Oh well, I have never tried feeding them heavily, or regularly for that matter. I brought the rose pots closer to the zucchini

I have a four year old bay leaf plant that I have never watered, fertilized or transplanted for so long that the roots went through the pot and started into the ground. That dug up I cut off the roots and chopped it apart to see of I can make a topiary.

I was hooked. A French potager container garden!I hunted for my old gardening books. I searched the internet. But apparently French potager gardens are not in vogue this year. I wrote to the author of French Kitchen Gardens to ask for book ideas. She wrote back and said, “That was a long time ago.” I have searched Amazon and gone to two Barnes and Noble for books. Potagers are not in. I had to buy a copy of McGee & Stuckey’s Bountiful Container which I have had previously, thrown away because I was never going to have another vegetable garden.

Here is the deal. I will pick about 3/4th of the zucchini my husband and I will eat this fall. I will have one sliced tomato salad, and if the snails do not eat my baby scarlet runner beans, I will have three meals of them. I will love the roses and will not forget to feed them. The cucumbers will not grow, the parsley will thrive, but here is the bottom line. I ordered worms for the worm bin, those have eaten a lot of garbage in the past. Oh my gosh, think of all this hope.

In the mail was a flier for all kinds of gardening work by Mr. Nelson's landscaping. My husband and I have been depressed and humiliated by the fact that we had not done our yard work. Or our daughter's, then the lawn became so high that it was impossible for us to do it. Really my husband does the lawn, but I do the weeding and it is the same difference.

The lot next to us is a slope and it has had blackberries, but it was cleared off and and planted with slow growing grass. But it needs mowing at least in spring and early summer as in Washington every thing grows like it is in a cartoon. i have contacted contractors and mowers about mowing the lot. Three or four men have come out and announced that the lot was too steep, Only manicured real lawns need apply. Their machines were too big. Their machines were too small. They did not want to have an accident turning over on the slope. Every year it is the same. And I get down on my knees and crawl to the guy who put in the grass in the first place and for $100.00 under the table, he will do it once or twice a year.

I made a telephone call to Mr. Nelson, and a foreigner answered and said that he could come right over for a free estimate. Nam Vo arrived wearing a ball cap with clipboard in hand. He spoke English except that I could not understand him. he told me "he fix ebything up. Look good. Ebything". Then he gave me a rather astounding sum to have the work done. But I did know that the price was in the ballpark. I asked him if he did the work? No, he had many people.

this all seemed rather skitzy to me. I have been burned by landscapers who charge $500.00 for essentially two hours work. So I decided to call up Mr. Nelson and have him explain things in more detail to me,in a way I could understand. Nam answers the phone. But I push through and ask to speak to Mr. Nelson. There is a huge pause, and finally Nam says there is no Mr. Nelson. His wife just picked out the name.

But Nam came as scheduled, with his father in law and his uncle. The relatives are not ancient, but they are not young and they have not had an easy life. The uncle starts on the lot. His lawn mower is obviously heavy duty, it is a gas push mower. But definitely not a fancy machine. This guy has the lot with the high grass mowed in less than an hour. They worked for over five hours straight, no stops, but an occasional lit cigarette as they worked. When they said they "get ebything nice," they get ebything nice. It is not done, but so far, so good.

My whole gut feeling told me not to have them do the job. But this is case of not judging a book by its "cover".

November 03, 2006

Yesterday was "Finados" here in Brazil, or, as the Mexicans call it, Day of the Dead. Americans recognize it as All Saints Day but we do not celebrate it. Brazilians and Mexicans, however, take the day off to honor their dead. Mexicans bring their beloveds' favorite foods and drink to the tomb and leave marigolds. They construct an elaborate altar at home with photos, marigolds, candles, sugar skulls, and cut out paper decorations that they hang about. Death is a cottage industry in both countries for one day.

Living on a road that passes by two cemetaries on this day can be quite the complication. I took Callie to a friend's house later in the day. It was a stormy day so there was still quite a crowd in the afternoon, those who had held off paying tribute between the wind and rain. A major highway separates the hill we live on from one of the cemetaries. Clumps of brightly dressed people on the hill across from us matched the colorful gravesites. There are few tombstones, mainly placques in the ground. Boys from the favelas came with water jugs and hoes; they would plant daisies for a small fee. Those honoring the dead could muck about or not, as they so chose. Other men and boys from the favelas escorted people in cars to parking spaces. Buses lined up where they could. There were people selling coconut and sugarcane juice for the thirsty and the usual stalls selling potted flowers. Garbage, mainly in the form of plastic wrappers from plants and shopping bags, was everywhere. Honoring and defiling at the same time. Although death is not as festive as it was in Mexico, it is a day when all can come together on common ground.

June 09, 2006

This rose is a David Austin rose named Gertrude Jeckle. The real Gertrude inspired many English style perennial gardens, her own and others . This rose is a fabulously scented rose. You smell it, and bliss moves over you. If the deer do not munch it, it is nearly indestructible. The first June bloom is hugely proficient. The rose just continues all summer. Oddly enough, some years when the deer have nearly mowed the rose bushes to the ground, the bloom comes back with a vengance. I have grown it in a pot, but not very well. It lives better, under even poor conditions, in the ground. Naturally, a rose has to love you.

Here are some innovative rose growing suggestions that my sister sent me from Better Homes and Gardens.

Look for ungrafted.

Deadhead at the neck, as opposed to down the stem at the first five leaves.

Include other plants to help prevent blackspot,and mildew. Use catmint, lupine, chives. I am going to try hardy geranium.

Lighten up on pruning. Prune only to remove dead wood and/or to make the rose fit its space.

June 03, 2006

Here is a question. Should older people, old farts, who can not take care of gardens, be allowed to use herbicides, use commercial fertilizers, and allow the wild plants to take over the yard? I ask you, because I am doing all of the above. Don't answer that question.

Do we have to move to condos? I have just been down in my hillside yard below with Michael. This garden, if it can be called a garden, faces west and staying upright is difficult, as the property is on a slope, and it is primarily sand, which is slipping down the hill. Egads what a thrash! We have spent half a morning programming a watering timer, positioning soaker hoses, weeding, and planting drought and sand tolerant plants. Michael has dug out invasive plants like thistle, and marrow. The yard is supposed to eventually be covered with rugosa roses, lavender and grasses. The grasses and the rugosas are winning.

There is quite a bit of pressure to be environmentally safe. I want to be "environmentally safe", but a good garden is a product of money and work. For example, I could have mulch sprayed into the yard, but that is a thousand dollars. Hired help is no bargain,if you can find someone. (Put the whiney teenagers to work . . right?) As the population ages, gardening becomes more difficult. And I might add, not as fun as it once was. Say, for example, you get arthritis or, as I have, a trick finger. I am not crazy about constantly putting my finger back.

If I think the young do not like to cook, I am thinking that gardening as a national pastime is right behind cooking. As Orphan Annie used to say, "It's a hard luck life".